Buildings

The Museum’s collection of historic buildings is at the heart of our work – our buildings have been Designated by the Government for their national and international importance. Saved from being demolished – or simply falling down – they’ve been carefully dismantled, then brought here to be conserved and painstakingly rebuilt.

You can see more than 50 buildings, spanning more than 600 years, from sites across southern England. The collection includes workers’ cottages, shops, farmhouses, barns, a watermill, and even a church. Most are open for you to go inside, explore and get a real feel for what it was like to live and work in them.

From our own times, the award-winning Downland Gridshell is a unique and spectacular building that combines traditional materials and 21st Century technology. So as well as visiting the past, you can see the future here, too.

Weald & Downland Museum Blog

If you like discovering how timber frame buildings were made you will love our timber framing from scratch workshops, as they take you from the raw timber to the “reared-up” carcass of a structure. Learning from the past is at the heart of the Museum’s course programme. In terms...read more